Mary Wusterbarth thought her toddler was struggling with an ear infection when she seemed sluggish. Instead, a virus had attacked the little girl’s heart, damaging it beyond repair. Brea needed a transplant. Within three weeks of a 2007 doctor visit, the 20-month-old had exhausted the $1 million lifetime maximum on her health insurance. Her parents have scrambled ever since for ways to cover thousands of dollars in monthly medical costs.

“We have no idea what kind of financial future we have,” said Wusterbarth, of Wake Forest, N.C. “The medical bills come almost daily. There’s never an end.” Insurers set lifetime limits to keep rates low on some policies, but holders are learning that individual caps that seemed large quickly max out as health care costs soar. Several patient advocacy groups are prodding insurers to raise the caps, which generally don’t adjust for inflation.

I see Martin Bashir has resurfaced. I join the others who are replying saying how much they miss him and his great show. Ari Melber, who has been filling in at that time slot is competent, but——lacks all the pizazz and sharp dialogue, personality and interviewing style that made the Bashir show must see. Wondering if he has any irons in the fire—–hope so, altho he’s featuring this musical tribute, “Be thankful for what you’ve got”

Things are tough… but: http://t.co/50wCeQLAIx
I want to be thankful for what we got! And that includes YOU – for your kindness and support

If Kornaky’s theory has validity. Why would Kristy not want NJ to profit from the building near the bridge? Would it be more than political retribution? Might he be in with any competitor to have the complex built in a different location? Kickback or what?

Infotainment is who we are and what we do.” says Phil G. “Undoing GOP lies, not my job” says C. Toad.
I can’t be the only one who has noticed a growing trend away from news towards gossip and entertainment.
Soon there will be little difference between David Letterman and MSNBC.

I don’t watch television news except for the MSNBC prime time line up that I’ve recorded.

But I do flip on the radio news for national updates on the hour mark and this was the lead story this morning on the West Coast @knx1070, CBS affiliate.

They also covered the WV water crisis, but the good news is that their “exclusive” Bob Gates interview on Face the Nation was overshadowed with actual news.

One thought about the MSM and GOP marching lockstep supporting the idea that young people won’t be interested in medical insurance. MSM/GOP really should qualify that claim — this might be true of young men, but virtually all young women don’t want to have 7 children by the time they’re 28 years old, regardless of marital status.

Girls become aware of the need for health insurance/contraception when they become women.

So this “claim” that the insurance/MSM/GOP were promoting had no basis in fact, something they might have become aware of if they had interviewed a few young women.

And on a lighter note, as people are settling in for the Golden Globe awards (as demanded by Karen Finney apparently), here’s a tweet from @PeteCashmore, Mashable founder — I changed his instagram pic to one where you can compare Pete to his coffee.

Adelaide has always had the weirdest climate in Australia – top of the hot days in the country is not unusual – they never seem to get mild days – it is either hot or cold. That they are now exceeding previous highs is the obvious concern

> A little boy was waiting for his mother to come out of the grocery store. As he waited, he was approached
> by a man who asked, “Son, can you tell me where the Post Office is?”
>
> The little boy replied, “Sure! Just go straight down this street a coupla blocks and turn to your right.”
>
> The man thanked the boy kindly and said, “I’m the new pastor in town.
> I’d like for you to come to church on Sunday.
> I’ll show you how to get to Heaven.”
>
> The little boy replied with a chuckle.
> “You’re bullshitting Me … You don’t even know the way to the Post Office

utastinliberal, thanks for the reminder that the line between ‘before’ and ‘after’ obamacare is like the line before and after antibiotics– people’s lives will be changed dramatically. hard to see it now, but as we look back at the ‘before’ picture, the contrast will be increasingly stark.

Jimmy Fallon just made a funny—–said it was a nightmare getting there (to the Golden Globes), that Chris Christie is out there directing traffic.
In other GG news, the words stunning and amazing are already so tired. They have been used to describe every single actress and every single dress. Some may be, most are not.
And do you realize how many times everyone uses the word amazing to describe everything? I’ve heard it about 50 times in the last few minutes in the little pre-GG interviews. It’s amazing!

This is the gibberish I got from Senator Cardin after I told him I wouldn’t contribute or support him if he stood against the POTUS on Iran. I have donated just over 5k to his previous campaigns. He’ll get nothing from me in the future.

Thank you for writing to me about the recent negotiations with Iran and new sanctions legislation. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts and concerns with me.

On November 23, 2013, the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China) announced an initial agreement to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Among other things, this six -month plan places limits on Iran’s enrichment capabilities, reduces existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, halts plutonium production and provides for unprecedented access and monitoring of Iranian nuclear facilities. In return, the P5+1 have agreed to “limited, temporary, targeted and reversible” sanction relief. This partial relief includes the suspension of sanctions on gold and precious metals, the Iranian auto sector, and Iran’s petrochemical exports. The bulk of international sanctions, including banking, oil and financial sanctions will remain in place. The purpose of this initial six -month agreement is to slow Iran’s nuclear program while continuing to negotiate a long-term solution that addresses the broader concerns of the international community. If at any point during the initial six -month period Iran fails to uphold its commitments, sanction relief will cease and new, tougher sanctions will be enforced.

Both Congress and the Administration share a common resolve that the preferred way to get Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program is through diplomacy. But we must be prepared to test Iran’s sincerity to comply with these latest efforts to keep them from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. I remain deeply concerned about Iran’s ability to follow through with these new commitments. Iran’s track record gives us good reason to have new and stronger sanctions at the ready, which is why I am a cosponsor of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act . While I understand the Obama Administration is opposed to this legislation, it is consistent with the President’s commitments that no new sanctions would go into effect as long as Iran is in compliance . It also reflects the President’s public statements that if Iran does not negotiate in good faith, new sanctions will be swiftly implemented.

Again, thank you for contacting me. I want to assure you that I remain committed to preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapon capability and will be monitoring developments closely over the next six months.

Claire, nothing is more infuriating than getting processed BS like this in response to our opposition. This could have been written by Sarah Palin. “While I understand the Obama administration is opposed…It is consistent with the president’s commitment…” Does he even read this stuff? He’s shafting the president and says it’s consistent with what the president wants. Keep the calls up to this idiot. Tell his staff you were insulted by his response because you are not an idiot.

WOW! That is the EXACT same response I got from him. Unfuckingbelievable. I emailed him back and tweeted him – told him forget about my vote. He and the other 14 backstabbing Dems can go to hell. I’m done with Cardin. Mikulski is standing strong under a lot of pressure. I sent her an email thanking her and asking her to please stay strong.

I’ve been catching up on TOD reading – there is much criticism of Democrats who are not supportive of PBO – with which I so agree – but it is incredibly frustrating that we have to assume that 100% of republicans will also be against the President and no-one is calling them out.

I remember when the President went to congress in regards to Syria – before this happened – virtually EVERY republican was in favor of a strike in Syria – suddenly they all changed their mind & wanted “diplomacy”. It seems just insane – but the President probably needs to come out in favor of sanctions against Iran to get them stopped – the world understands what is happening – but the GOP will never agree with anything – domestic or foreign that is supported by the President.

Yesterday my daughter asked
(again) why I didn’t do something useful with my time. Talking about my
“doing something useful” seemed to be her favorite topic of conversation
anymore. She was “only thinking of me” and suggested I go down to the
senior center and socialize with the other seniors and play games, do
crafts, play cards or bowl, and have lunch.

I did this a few
times and when I got home last night, I decided to teach her a lesson
about staying out of my business.

I told her that I had a great
time and met one of the volunteers there who signed me up for a
parachute club.

She said, “Are you nuts? You’re over 85 years
old and you’re going to start jumping out of airplanes?”

I proudly showed her that I even got a membership card.

She said
to me, “Good grief, where are your glasses! This is a membership to a
Prostitute Club, not a Parachute Club.”

“Well then I’m in
trouble twice… I signed up for five jumps a week,” I told her.

She fainted.

Life as a senior citizen is not getting any
easier, but sometimes it really can be fun…..

I don’t tear up alot – but when young men see no way forward – or die for all the wrong reasons (war being a major wrong reason) – I find it excessively sad. In their late teens, twenties – should be the time for people to discover the best that life has to offer – it was so nice to see some-one who cared enough to bring this young one back to the life he now has.

Key to this progression has been the fact that, rather than building cumulatively on successes, more often than not conservative succession has been built on successive failures — each one sold as a “common sense” way of dealing with the chaos created by previous conservative incarnation.

/

Reagan created massive federal deficits, and presided over rapid deindustrialization. Gingrich skillfully tapped into Ross Perot’s mobilization of the resentment this fueled, and tried to redirect it toward a massive restructuring of government and dismantling of the welfare state. His aggressive, confrontational, no-holds-barred politics soured the public so profoundly it was necessary to bring in something completely different — the “compassionate conservatism” of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, touting his bipartisan record as “a uniter, not a divider,” which, in turn, once tested in the White House, was eventually revealed as a hollow fraud, signaling the need to return to an even more extreme version of Gingrich’s politics of government dismantlement and implacable resistance — or if that began running out of steam, another go at a “bipartisan” governor from “outside of Washington.”

For conservatives themselves, almost every stage of this process requires massive forgetting, if not rewriting, of what conservatives stood for and supported just a heartbeat previously. All that mattered was that the new incarnation provided easy, self-evident answers to all the most pressing problems. At the same time, the wider political system had to be convinced to see this latest stage of lurching from one spectacular failure to another in much more normalized, humdrum terms, say, as a question of seeking “strong leadership” framed within a personality-based account of politics — an account in which actual material policy consequences all but disappear, except, of course, for those that concern the minuscule class of major political donors. Such is the context in which right-wing radicalism of various different stripes has been repeatedly reinvented as folksy common sense.

Every last report in the MSM (Times, WAPO etc) while critical of Christie – HAS to mention something bad about the President. They have been doing it for 5 years & just can’t stop. Obama syndrome is a real disease of the media.

What Christie has done – has NOTHING to do with President Obama – the governor of a small state has stepped well in it – and there should be NO mention of other politicians in relation to what has happened in NJ. If Christie survives this politically the US GOP will be corrupter than ever before – with the help of the media.